Constantin Meunier

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER (Belgium, 1831 - 1905).
"La Glebe", 1892.
Relief in bronze.
Signed and with the founder's stamp.
Exhibitions: "European sculpture of the 20th century", European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), Barcelona, 2014.
Measurements: 45 x 48 cm.
Meunier initially trained alongside his brother, the engraver Jean-Baptiste Meunier, and then entered the Brussels Academy in 1845, where he was directed by the sculptor Louis Jehotte from 1848. Then, between 1851 and 1857, he was in a private studio under the orders of the sculptor Charles-Auguste Fraikin and the painter François Joseph Navez. In the afternoons he attended the painting classes of Charles de Groux, from the studio of St. Luke, who had an important influence on Meunier. He made friends with artists like Louis Dubois or Félicien Rops, with whom he founded in 1868 the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts (Free Society of Fine Arts) in Brussels, an exponent of avant-garde realism. He began his first sculptures in the eighties. He showed special attention for the world of mining, such as "The explosion of firedamp" (1887, about a real tragedy), "The miners' wives" or "Return of the miners". He worked almost exclusively in bronze, giving his figures of workers an awareness of their humanity and dignity. In 1887 he was appointed professor at the Academy of Louvain and then at the Academy of Brussels. He then began a set of austere sculptures dedicated to labor, which he wanted to call Monument to Labor. The set remained unfinished, as he only made four reliefs (The Industry, The Harvest, The Port and The Mine) crowned with four allusive figures (The Blacksmith, The Sower, The Ancestor and The Miner); the monument was installed much later, in 1930, in the Trooz Square in Brussels. In 1896 he presented a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Art Noevau Gallery in Paris, with the help of Henry Van de Velde. He was then well received in Germany and Austria. Elected a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium (1900), he received several awards as a painter (bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1889) and as a sculptor (grand prize at the Universal Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900, officer of the Order of Leopold and knight of the Legion of Honor in 1889). His house in Brussels was fitted out as a museum as early as 1900, a few years before his death, which occurred while he was working on a sculptural group entitled Fecundity, in honor of the writer Émile Zola.